lot of documents; extortion or bribery of volost judges (high-ranking judges for the same crime were punished much more leniently - a custom worthy of the attention of a historian of criminal law); sneak; betrayal of the trustee to the interests of his trustee. I no longer cite more serious crimes that were subject to the death penalty under the laws of Grozny. The reign of Ivan IV is very important in the history of the death penalty. This king acquired the very name of Ivan the Terrible for the exceptional cruelty of his character and for the countless number of capital punishments he committed. Few historical figures can compete with him in the matter of committing and multiplying death penalties. He executed on the most insignificant political pretexts, executed not only those whom he considered guilty, but also their innocent families. So in 1561 he executed a certain Maria with 5 sons for friendship with Adashev and for witchcraft. The brother of the famous Adashev was executed along with his twelve-year-old son for political reasons. The wives of the nobles executed in 1571, including the FO, were, by order of the tsar, drowned in the river. He executed, together with their husbands, not only completely innocent wives and children, but often all relatives. So the kazvens were the Kolychevs, the family of Metropolitan Philip, the princes of Yaroslavl, Pronsky, Ushatye, Zabolotsky, the Buturlin family and many others. etc. Grozny executed people in Moscow on the same day. According to the chroniclers, in Novgorod for 5 weeks he daily put to death by drowning for treason from 500 to 1500 people, and in total, according to the chronicler, he executed 60,000 people in Novgorod.
During the period from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to Alexei Mikhailovich, the use of the death penalty expanded more and more. And this despite the good and gentle character of such kings as Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich. The life and growth of public institutions depends not so much on the character of the head of state as on the general reasons inherent in a certain society. The Council Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was for this time what the Law Code was for the previous one. It, so to speak, collected and consolidated what had grown over a certain period of time through practice, which turned into custom. This legislative monument contains 54 types and subtypes of crimes subject to the death penalty. Without mentioning the crime
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
...grave crimes, such as: treason, murder, and others, we, to convey an idea of the extent of the application of the death penalty at this time, will point out the following: blasphemy; interruption of a church service; failure to report in general and failure of a wife and children to report the treason of a husband and father; inflicting a wound with a weapon in the presence of the tsar; church theft; the conversion of a Russian by a Mussulman to the Mussulman faith; the sale, possession, and use of tobacco. According to the testimony of Kotoshikhin, in addition, the following crimes were punished by the death penalty: the sin of sodomy, sorcery and black magic, book corruption, that is, the interpretation of the dogmas of faith not in accordance with the prophets, apostles, and holy fathers. During the reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, on the occasion of the unrest over the coin affair, 150 people were executed in Moscow in one day, and in total over several years (in those years, says Kotoshikhin) 7,000 people. A new proof that the spirit of the times is stronger than the spirit of a single ruler. I say this for the reason that all these executions were carried out during the reign of such a good, meek, most quiet sovereign as Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich.